


greek tragedy

by cloudtalking



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Trans Neil Josten, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, little bit of angst???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 02:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13157796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: for @jojen-hewitt for the tfc net secret santa:A hades and persephone au w a twist





	greek tragedy

**Author's Note:**

> @jojen-hewitt asked for a Greek Myth au and i shoved as many aus as i could into it.

falling was possibly the best mistake he’d ever made. letting himself be pulled in by the gravity of his lover.  orbiting the sun in the darkness of space, allowing his warmth to shine onto his skin. 

 

he was a sunflower, rooted to the spot by memories and yearning for the touch of sunlight, reaching out but never quite touching. 

 

neil let himself bloom in the light, finally realizing himself as the person he was to become. he couldn’t bear to do it without his light, but he’d never thought he’d had to.

 

it was winter in july, a blizzard so long he’d forgotten spring.

 

(he was a mayflower, blooming as spring spread across the earth. his smiles were the harvest, unpredictable and sweet, his tears — seldom in happiness — were the rain)

 

he flicked a switch on the wall, allowing fluorescents to illuminate his shop. It was five in the morning, but Neil was in the habit of being an early riser. 

 

(Greeting the sun before he rose was routine, feeling the kiss of his old friend dance over his skin was a familiar comfort. The moon too, as he made room for his lover, was always kind to him)

 

the scent of metal and rubbing alcohol hit Neil like a train, but he simply rubbed his temples and took a few ibuprofen for his oncoming headache. 

 

(The scent of the dead was overpowering; the smell of blood and metal and rot hung in the air like humidity. it was soon joined by the smell of his own vomit.) 

 

_ Ariadne's Inks _ was nearly monochrome with little bursts of color in the form of intentional graffiti clinging onto the walls. Photos of his favorite tattoos hung on the walls between booths.

 

the reflections shown in the many mirrors were almost alien to Neil, the scars running across his cheeks like vines wholly unfamiliar. he kept his hair shaved at the sides, it was easier than dealing with the effort of hiding the mottled tissue where hair refused to regrow. 

 

(his skin was brown like earth, unblemished and untouched. His hair grew untamed and uncut. He braided flowers in between the strands.)

 

_ Ariadne’s _ wouldn’t open until noon, and even then he didn’t have any appointments until one. Plenty of time to go running until he felt appropriately tired enough for being up since the asscrack of dawn.

 

This was routine, a way to blow off steam and keep his frustration from boiling over the edge. It had been nineteen years, and he was tired of waiting.

 

(He’d lived to see flowers grow and die, to see gods kill and create, to see man find fire and get burned. This was his life, as it had been for more springs than he could count, and yet it felt as if he hadn’t even crossed the starting line.)

 

_ Ariadne’s _ was located in a college town, only a few minutes away from the campus. His clients ranged from artsy liberal arts students who gave every ink blot a meaning and a house full of frat boys branding themselves with their crest to ensure they’d be brothers forever. 

 

But forever was such an awfully long time.

 

(He knew only the rules his mother had carved into his brain since birth, enforced through fists like an avalanche, falling hard against his skin. 

 

He was to always keep moving, running across grassy fields and chasing the sun. The shadows would do him no good, only obscure him from her sight. 

 

the minute he saw a dark cloud he was to run to a clear sky. clouds belonged to his father and his storms, and he could not be caught up in the madness that those storms were known to bring.

 

this was how it was to be for forever, but even they couldn’t last that long.)

 

he ran through the dark, watching the sunrise paint the sky in yellow and purple from in between the buildings. 

(he ran through the dark, chasing the sunset. even he wasn’t fast enough to outrun the wolves that nipped at his heels) 

 

_ Asphodel’s  _ obnoxiously colored sign glared at him even in the dark, glowing brightly. It was orange and white, and the absolute worst shades of both.

 

Finally, the sun came up, and winter turned to spring.

 

(he was caught, trapped between the jaws of hounds too big to be of earth. he could barely see the colors bleeding into the skies as he was pulled down into the darkness. 

 

the earth, which had allowed an open chasm, filled in the hole above him, submerging him in an eternal midnight, and the world above froze over)

 

The shop was covered head to toe in flowers, each one clashing heinously with the color scheme. Neil was sure that satellites could pick up  _ Asphodel  _ from space if they tried hard enough.

 

Anyone could find it if they tried hard enough.

 

Neil walked up to the front desk, tended to by a brown skinned boy with a laurel bouncing on his curls. 

 

“Welcome to _Asphodel_!” He grinned. “Can I help you with anything?”

 

(he scrambled away from the smell of the dead, unfamiliar yet terribly nostalgic. he was spring, birthing new life with every breath, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know what happened to that life before he danced back onto earth. 

 

he had never been so utterly lost before, had never lost sight of the sun quite as bad as he had now. he was underground, surrounded by corpses and bathed in shadows. he knew where he was, if only from his mother’s stories. 

 

_ “Do you see that river, my dear?” she asked, brushing the petals out of his hair.  _

 

_ He nodded, not looking back at her, still transfixed by the black murky water. It was cluttered with stars and gold pieces, broken hearts and lost dreams.  _

 

_ “If you follow it for far enough, it will empty out into Hades,” she warned.  _

 

_ “Hades?” He turned to her, eyes open wide.  _

 

_ She nodded. “The realm of the dead and all the riches under the earth. You are never to touch the river, nor are you to visit Hades. I cannot see you there.” _

 

With the roof of rocks above his head, he was electrified. It was terrifying and thrilling. There was not a place on earth his mother couldn’t follow, that his father couldn’t send his storms, but this was not earth. 

 

This was a place for lost souls and great heroes, for those deserving of endless suffering and those whose suffering has ended. This was a land covered in fire and corpses, beautiful gardens of flowers and fruits fertilized by the bodies in the ground. 

 

this was a place no one could touch him anymore, and that was wholly unfamiliar.

 

he wound his way through the mountains of gold and bones, through the pits of fire and tortured souls and the ghosts wandering aimlessly through

Asphodel. 

 

It was almost welcoming, an imprint of the fields of wildflowers he’d grown up in. At least until he felt a hand grasp his shoulder.

 

“What the—“ he tried to yell, but then lips were on his and his coherent thoughts were lost.)

  
  


“Yeah, actually,” Neil said, surprising himself. “Just a marigold, please.”

 

“A single marigold?” the boy— his name tag read  _ Nicky _ — arched a brow. “Not that I’m an expert, but we’re supposed to know a bit of flower language before we work the register. Marigolds are a lot of things, but they’re not really known for much good.”

 

_ Despair and grief over the loss of love ; Cruelty and coldness due to jealousy ; Desire for wealth ; Remembering and celebrating the dead ; Sacred offerings to the Gods  _

 

“I know.” 

 

(he woke up in an unfamiliar room, painted in shadows and shades of grey. It was minimalist to a point, only containing a bed and a closet, but the furnishings were more high quality than anything he’d ever seen. 

 

It didn’t mean much, coming from someone who’d never slept in a bed before. He didn’t need to sleep at all, he’d never been allowed to be tired before.

 

Sleep,  he had been told, was for children who didn’t care if they died, and his mother didn’t raise him to throw his life away.

 

He wasn’t sure he had much of a life to throw away, a never ending loop of running through fields in the spring and following the rules because he’d long since learned what consequences came with breaking them. 

 

the room felt more like a cage the more he marveled at it, the seemingly homely atmosphere cutting him like barbed wire. he needed to leave, but he had no way to predict what was waiting for him on the other side of the slate painted door.

 

he’d known danger in the darkness, in the poisons of his own flowers and the claws of his own beasts. he’d known danger in his mother, the way her temper changed and threw him off his feet like an earthquake. he’d known danger in the skies, the lightning that couldn’t help but hit his back, leaving marks like broken glass. 

 

he knew no danger in death. he didn’t know what to fear. 

 

and for that reason, for the simple explanation of being oblivious to the consequences, he stepped out and was met by the sunset colored petals of mourning.)

 

Nicky stared at him like he was trying to read him, but Neil was written in a dead language. He eventually just sighed, giving up.

 

“At least get a bouquet or some shit, make it worth the money.”

 

Neil walked out of Asphodel with a bouquet of orange flowers and a promise to return. This was the river, and Neil would be riding it all the way down.

 

(the flowers were spread out at the foot of the door like a grave and he couldn’t help but think it was one. he certainly felt dead, his head pounding and overwhelmed by confusion. 

 

“He’s awake!” a shrill voice sounded, accompanied by pounding footsteps sprinting down the hallway. he didn’t have time to think before he took off down the unfamiliar winding hallway with energy that seemed almost inexorable after centuries spent never slowing down. 

 

the footsteps behind him were still following, but they were slowing, not nearly as loud as before. he couldn’t allow his feet to drag even the slightest. he could not be caught, not when he couldn’t tell enemy from ally in the shadows of the underground.

 

eventually the hallway spilled into a cathedral of a room, and even he had to appreciate it. The domed roof was covered in stained glass recreations of the stars he’d grown up watching, light filtering in from the fire and whatever unknown celestial body that kept the realm of the dead lit.

 

the room was supported by columns carved from bone and held together by bronzed corpses, faces frozen in agony. banners that spiraled around the supports listed the names and crimes of those unlucky enough to end up holding up the room. 

 

The centerpiece was a throne, larger than the ones he had seen at Pan’s court the few times he’d visited. it was built of precious stones, sparking even in the faint lighting. the base was built of sunflower golds that snaked up the throne like vines, and the other stones became a beautiful disorder of color. rubies and sapphires and emeralds and diamonds, each equally distributed and eye-catching in their own way.

 

but he couldn’t focus on the furnishing, not when an angel obscured his view. 

 

he was unlike anything he’d ever seen, but his heart rang out with recognition as his mind rang out with fear.

 

he couldn’t force out words at first, in part out of terror and in part out of awe. the man was beautiful, prettier than any of the gems he sat on. In comparison to him, gold was just a metal, and rubies were just rocks. Nothing could hold a candle to his flame.)

 

Neil jogged back to Ariadne’s, careful of the bouquet. his blood was burning with giddiness and impatience. 

 

(his mother had told him a story once, before their lives depended on avoiding the sky and all it’s storms.

 

_ “This isn’t our true form, did you know?” She asked, holding him close. He shook his head gravely. he’d worn many skins; an otter, a bear, a fox. The one he wore now was always the one he reverted to, his dark skin and auburn hair, eyes like bluebells.  _

 

_ “In the beginning, we had many arms and many legs, some with four of each.” _

 

_ He gasped, only having ever associated such a creature with monsters. Those creatures his mother and he fought. _

 

_ “Yes, we were monstrous, but we were happy. We were whole.” she said, smiling down at his bewildered features. “Unfortunately we were still monstruos, and a blight on this earth. We were cut apart in pieces, two arms and two legs each. We could live like this, we do so now, but none that do so will ever be whole.” _

 

_ he looked down at himself; two arms and two legs.  _

 

_ “How do you become whole again?” he asked, voice slightly shaking.  _

 

_ “Your other pieces are out there, wandering. They’re lost too, looking for you.” _

 

_ “Really?” He tried to imagine people made for him, people who were every inch carved of the same clay, molded by different hands.  _

 

_ She nodded. “Finding your other pieces is a blessing most don’t have. Many people die before they can, but once you do you can’t live without them.”  _

 

_ The thought was horrific, being so close to someone that ripping them away could kill. He wanted it more than life. _

 

_ “Then it’s a good thing I won’t die,” he grinned. His mother’s eyes grew sad. _

 

_ “Of course not, dear.”) _

 

Neil traced his keys with his fingers, searching for the right one as he came across his shop, but the door was open.

 

His veins were ice and his footsteps were soft as he carefully entered. The lights were on, blindingly bright, and the store itself seemed to be untouched. 

 

Except for Neil’s booth.

 

His book of tattoos, meant for customers to lead through for inspiration, was flipped open to a page of floral inks and tossed on the floor, but me couldn’t give less of a shit about the book.

 

A blonde boy sat on the leather seat, feet propped up on Neil’s counter, and he was floored. 

 

( he knew the king like he knew his own name,  the throne a physical manifestation of the pedestal he’d put him on. 

 

“Hades.”)

 

Neil had never heard his name, but it was a familiar weight on his tongue. Two syllables, two vowels. 

 

“Andrew.”

 

“Neil,” Andrew replied, drawing out the name like he was afraid to let it go.

 

Neil crowded closer, needing to touch, needing to put his hands and mouth on familiar skin and trace familiar scars like landmarks. He knew the terrain, he’d plotted the map of Andrew Minyard. But it’s been so long that he would need a refresher.

 

He stopped before there was a true danger of invading Andrew’s space, bouncing between his toes to the balls of his feet as a nervous habit.

 

“Stop being an idiot.” Andrew’s voice was both uncaring and disdainful, but Neil knew frustration when he heard it.

 

“Yes or no?” He said, confidence and idiocy filling him as one.

 

“Yes.”

 

Neil carefully — always carefully, comfort was a commodity carved from glass— reached out to Andrew, standing in between his thighs. He cupped Andrew’s face in his hands and kissed him.

 

It was fitting pieces together like a jigsaw, it was a dam breaking in between two rivers. It was becoming whole, for however long they could hold their breath.

 

Andrew’s face was dusted pink when they parted, the only indication that he was at all affected. Neil buried his face in Andrew’s neck, pressing kisses into the skin.

 

“Take a shower,” Andrew said roughly. Neil reluctantly pulled his face away from the mark he was making on Andrew’s neck.

 

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said, which was admittedly ridiculous. It would only take a few minutes tops, but they’d been separated for years and for lifetimes. he didn’t want to lose him as soon as he turned his back.

 

“I’m not going anywhere.” Andrew promised. He knew he returned the sentiment. “Unless, of course, you intend on smelling like wet dog forever.”

 

Neil grinned, then his eyes widened.

 

He rushed back to the front door, picking up the bouquet he must’ve dropped, and ran back in to meet Andrew’s thoroughly unimpressed gaze.

 

“These are for you,” he said, offering it up.

 

Andrew took it. “Get in the shower.”

 

“Of course, your Majesty.” Neil bowed, much to Andrew’s disdain.

 

He made sure to hurry to the back rooms, hearing the marigolds hit the door as he closed it behind him.

 

_ The beauty and warmth of the rising sun ; Winning the affections of someone through hard work ; Promoting cheer and good relations in a relationship ; Sacred offerings to the Gods  _

 

(Hades’s stare was heavy, falling on him like a particularly heavy crown. It felt like the rest of the underworld, forbidden and thrilling, tempting and dangerous. he stared the devil in the face, taking in his yellow eyes and sharp jawline. he wanted to hold his face in his hands, but he was sure that it would cut his palm. 

 

the devil was a snake, and snakes had venom.

 

“Kore.” Hades seemed unmoved, but he couldn’t help but flinch. the title had garnered dust from disuse, but Hades simply brushed it off and shoved it through his heart. The blade had never dulled.

 

“Don’t call me that. That’s not my name.”

 

“I’ll call you whatever the hell I want,” Hades countered. “That is your title.”

 

“There is no spring in the underworld, there is no harvest. I have no title here.” there was no real fight to start with Hades, no real quarrel. But he hadn’t been Kore since before the fall. There was no reason to start it up again now.

 

“There is also no living here,” Hades said, which was fair. “If Kore is not your title, you can find yourself a grave.”

 

Graves were pretty, he knew. They gave humans use for his flowers and for his mother’s stones. hills of polished rock and wilting bouquets made for a beautiful landscape.

 

Graves were not for gods.

 

Graves were there for pushing people in, lined up like dominos. Immortality was a game, to be played with easy-to-break pieces. he’d played this game often enough to know. He was a piece, but not a pawn. He wasn’t a pawn, but never a king. He was a knight, borne of a natural disaster. He was life in an impossible place, he was life anywhere and everywhere. He was spring. He was  life. He was the worst disaster of them all. He doomed everything that had ever been born to die. 

 

“Call me Persephone.” 

 

Hades arched a brow, but wasn’t all that surprised. He knew who his father was. “Persephone, then.”

 

_ περθω (pertho) to destroy  ; φονη (phone) murder) _

 

_ … _

 

There used to be a time when Neil had never known a winter, never known a time where the earth wasn’t warm beneath his feet. 

 

There used to be a time where death and dying were vague concepts, where losing someone was barely a thought. 

 

But Neil had loved, and he had lost, and it had been cold. It had been empty and freezing. He knew that parts of him had died, unable to withstand the frost. 

 

It was winter again, years of an ice age had thawed only to see that snow would come back. But winter was warm, winter was fire and family and hot cocoa and aggressive decorating. 

 

He had spent far too much of his time and money wrapping  _ Ariadne’s _ up in ribbons and lights, making his shop a fucking tourist attraction. Andrew had done nothing, preferring to watch Neil let himself get tangled up in the LEDs and wrapping paper on the floor of their apartment.

 

He was tired, heavy with the work of sticking needles into people all day. He had a long color job, the client preferring to get the brunt of it done today instead of spread out over several appointments like what was usually recommended. Neil found some comfort in the way his client had to dig their fingernails into the armrests to keep their composure.

 

He was a rebirth of destruction and murder, he was allowed to take some pleasure in causing pain.

 

“Drew, I’m home!” It was a rather redundant announcement, seeing as his tired feet had hit the hardwood floor like canonfire and the cats had raised enough of a fuss that even the neighbors would’ve heard, but it was the principle of the thing.

 

The cats wove around his ankles as he continued onwards towards the kitchen. “Babe?”

 

Andrew stood under the doorway, his unimpressed expression practically a come hither in itself. 

 

Above him, pinned up by a thumbtack and a bow, was Nicky’s lovely gift of mistletoe. 

 

(Persephone had become acquainted with death and fear. He was murder and death. He belonged there, in the underworld.

 

Twin hounds trailed him as he wove through the winding halls of the devil’s palace, named for the aspects he had left behind as Kore. 

 

_ Pure _ and  _ Maiden.  _ Neither had ever described him, but the hounds of hell filled them out better than he ever could. 

 

the palace was dark, something Persephone had been running from his whole life. It had become more of a home to him than the light.

 

It was in the dark that he had stared Hades down and changed his name. It was in the dark where their eyes met and everything in the universe clicked into place. It was in the dark that lips melded together and hands roamed and explored every inch of the other’s bodies, committing every detail to memory.

 

Even in the dark, life blossomed. The palace opened up around him, a garden hiding in the patio and safe from the fire and fumes of Hades. Trees that grew gold and silver, flowers that glowed like stars. All of it was new and beautiful, so strange and alien to even he whose flowers bloomed only to please.

 

In the middle, terrifyingly familiar, grew a tree gated in with golden bars, and on that tree a single pomegranate.

 

Leaning against the cage, even more terrifyingly familiar, was Hades himself.

 

“Your Majesty,” Persephone grinned. “I was beginning to think I’d never see you again.”

 

“It’s been barely half a day,” Hades pointed out. He was unimpressed as ever, rolling his eyes at his dramatics, but it was a reaction and not even a bad one.

 

“A moment spent without you is a moment too long,” Persephone said, truth ringing in his words.

 

“You’re truly one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met.”

 

“Maybe so,” he allowed. “But I’m also one of the stupidest people you’ve ever kissed.”

 

“You say that like that makes a difference.”

 

Persephone came closer, finding his place next to him as easy as breathing. 

 

“It does, at least for this stupid thing.”

 

“And that stupid thing is?” Hades arched a brow.

 

Persephone reaches inside the gilded cage and plucked the pomegranate from its branch. “This.”

 

Hades’s eyes widened as he bit into the soft flesh of the fruit and sealed his fate.

 

“I love you,” he whispered. “And that’s not me being stupid or me making a mistake, know this to be true.”

 

“You can’t go back now, not forever.” Hades said, as if he hasn’t heard. Persephone hadn’t been expecting a response.

 

“Why would I want to leave at all?” It was so innocent, so pure and true that Hades’s words were almost knocked completely off of his tongue.

 

“I hate you.”

 

“Oh really? What percent am I up to this time? Ninety?”

 

“You are at one hundred.”)

 

When Neil’s lips met Andrew’s under the mistletoe, they tasted like home and pomegranate juice. 

**Author's Note:**

> I had to hurry to finish this, and i'm sorry it's late, but I had a lot of fun!! I hope you liked it!!


End file.
